There is only one author whose talents do not fail. For the rest of us, the game is this: given our limits, how far can we go and how well can we travel?
How far can we go? Notice, this speaks nothing of the destination itself. I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. It appears, for the time being at least, that's not what I'll be doing with my life. I changed my goal, my original destination, because I discovered my limits. Failure hurt.
Ah, but how well did I travel! Along the way I gained friends, self-knowledge, independance. In consequence there was pride and relief as I mastered my schoolwork. Getting paid for work that was challenging and interesting. There were moments of astonishing beauty in Pittsburgh. Oh there was fear, too. Jangly creditors. Aching loneliness. Friends who stood beside me when the way was darkest, and others who I'll never know why they abandoned me. Wretched embarrasment sometimes, and life restoring bonhomie other times.
All this, and mine is not an exciting life.
We must have goals, for otherwise we won't have any efficient way of deciding to what we must say, "No." And yet, neither our eventual destination nor our happiness when we get there is up to us. None of us even know the day we settle our final accounts.
Amazing, but I write in the shadow of the philosophers.
My entirely unsolicited suggestion is this. Of the two halves of the game, I've learned the second is by far the most important. I leave you with Nintendo. Rescuing the princess is not really that exciting. You eat the mushroom, shoot your fireballs and you're done. Your choices are really limited to taking the wormhole to skip a few levels and how many gold coins you bother to pick up along the way. But the process of getting there is what happily wastes an afternoon. Enjoy the leaps.
3 comments:
Thanks. I needed that.
In an observation that either goes with or steps on your observations, it suddenly occurred to me, after reading your post, that the best video games were always the ones that didn't end. You simply played on.
You're welcome, Bill. I'm just glad that I managed to be marginally coherent at that early hour.
And Tom, your observation is well made. The only computer game I've bought for my laptop is Civilization III, which can theoretically go on forever. Back on my 486, I enjoyed SimCity 2000, which was another limitless game.
Post a Comment